146 WIVES OF THE CAESARS. 



age of puberty ; if ancient testimonies may be credited, he had not 

 attained the age of manhood. In Agrippa, she received a husband 

 so advanced in years that reciprocity of passion was improbable at 

 least. Bubmissive to her father's will, she notwithstanding saw that 

 her connubial destiny was ruled by mere political expedience, and 

 that marriage was a bond to which the sentiments of love and pre- 

 ference were no essential parties. Again, when she reviewed her 

 father's life and mother's fortune, the indulgence of the former's self- 

 ishness exhibited a picture of injustice and inconstancy, a tissue of 

 caprice and restless wantoness, which formed a striking contrast with 

 the cold indifference, the gross insensibility, evinced to her particular 

 affections. The marriages of Caesar had been governed by his interest, 

 and made and broken by his passions. Three of his repudiated wives, 

 among them Julia's mother, was still alive and moving with unble- 

 mished reputation in the Roman court. The father thus had thrice 

 embraced the dispensations of a libertine provision ; he had twice 

 imposed upon his daughter an unwelcome husband : the law of 

 wantoness had thrice availed the parent, who on two occasions had re- 

 fused the law of nature to his child. The offended spirit and ungo- 

 vernable temperament of Julia were little studious of concealment ; 

 no sooner was she wedded to Agrippa, than she yielded piety to the 

 impulse of her passions. Indifferent to reputation even, she scarcely 

 cared for the exposure of her pleasures ; her nature incessantly betrayed 

 her into concessions of the last iniquity; nor did pride, so often the 

 associate of exalted vice, restrain her from connexion with the hum- 

 blest pretenders to her favour. Licentiousness at once so extravagant 

 and daring, mixed too with meretricious baseness a gratuitous defi- 

 ance of the laws, and vicious ridicule of all that was reverend in 

 usage and authority, became notorious in the capital ; and Julia was 

 the common topic of scandal, pleasantry, and censure. Augustus, it 

 appears, was the only person in the city to whom the flagrant errors 

 of his daughter were unknown. The partners in her guilty com- 

 merce unreservedly declared the favours of the princess, and detailed 

 the circumstances of their shame with an unblushing levity. Julia 

 herself, indifferent to the notoriety of her disgrace, proclaimed it in 

 the moments of her mirth, in terms of most abandoned raillery ; and 

 being asked on one occasion, how it happened that her children bore 

 so striking a resemblance to Agrippa, she replied, " she never took a 

 passenger till after the completion of the vessel's freight." * 



It would be affectation to express surprise at vices in the highest 

 rank of Roman life. The history of crimes is fairly shared between 

 the great and humble of the world. But, wherefore, Julia with a 

 splendid taste, habituated to the intercourse with all that were re- 

 fined and delicate in the imperial court, should have descended to 

 the low obscenities of which she is accused, is altogether a perplex- 

 ing problem ; unless we take the vigorous and rapid growth of vice 

 as its solution. 



* " Cumque conscii flagitiorum mirarentur quo modo similes Agrippae filios 

 pareret, quae tarn vulgo potestatum sui corporis faceret ; ait, Numquam enim 

 nisi navi plena tollo vectorem." MacroMi Satnrnal. 1. 2, c. 5. 



